Marathoner Rob Watson grows extremely animated in trying to make his point. He slaps his hands together in a violent motion that indicates two worlds colliding. You can almost hear Gustav Holst’s jarring orchestral suite The Planets — Mars, the Bringer of War.

He is describing the greatest fear of any marathoner, including those entered in Sunday’s Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon: Hitting the wall.

The Canadian Olympian ran smack into it in his marathon debut in Houston last year. It was unlike anything the London, Ont., runner had experienced before.

“It’s an accumulation of so much crap coming together and then it explodes because it’s like hitting a wall,” said Watson. “It’s the fatigue and the pounding and the glycogen depletion. It was terrible. My last 10 kilometres of that race was struggling to survive. Just one step after another. Just focusing on finishing the damn race.

“Time went out the window. Goals went out the window. I just wanted to get to the damn finish line. It hurt. It was miserable, definitely miserable. The wall’s real. I’ve experienced it. And it’s not fun.”

The wall isn’t discriminatory, either. Many will hit the wall on Sunday. It will stand in the way of nearly every marathoner at some point in their career, whether they be Olympians or recreational runners.

“It’s like someone’s taken a baseball bat and is just beating on your quads and your calves and you have no energy left anymore,” said Dylan Wykes of Kingston, Ont., one of the top Canadians entered Sunday. “You’re trying, but every step is painful and you’re not getting anywhere. It can be a pretty brutal experience.”

Mind altering, too.

Reid Coolsaet, the man given the best chance of toppling Jerome Drayton’s 36-year-old Canadian marathon record Sunday, hit the wall in his debut marathon in Ottawa. He kept looking down at his thighs, which felt stripped of all their energy, trying to figure out what happened to them.

“I was convinced they actually looked different because they felt so foreign to anything I’ve felt before,” said the Hamilton native. “I remember I was running and looking down and seeing if there was physical changes just in my quads.”

The ever-descriptive Watson can certainly relate.

“It can break your brain it seems like,” he said. “I remember I was running out there and I was 35 kilometres into the race and I was hurting so bad and I was just grunting — Ohhhhh — and just like screaming and going, ‘What am I doing?’

“You’ve really got to centre yourself and focus and you’ll be running by groups of people and they’re cheering and being so positive and you’re just like in a rage. ‘Shut up. Leave me alone.’ It’s just weird.”

But not out of the ordinary, according to Dr. Jon McGavock, a Canadian Institutes of Health Research scientist and exercise physiologist.

“What hitting the wall is — some guys use the term ‘bonk’ — essentially what you’ve done is your blood sugar has hit a level that’s low enough where your nervous system and your muscles can’t work at the same rate anymore,” said McGavock. “If it’s low enough, your nervous system is feeling disoriented.

“The extreme case is people finishing Ironman races or marathon races where they’re completely disoriented and you can see them wobbling back and forth. In that case, their blood sugar’s so low their central nervous system isn’t working at all.”

The University of Manitoba professor said one way to avoid bonking is to load up on carbohydrates heading into the race. That allows runners to store extra glycogen in their muscles and liver and essentially serves as protection against hitting the wall.

He said traditionally marathoners reduce their carbohydrate intake a week before the race to prime the body for wanting to have more. Around two or three days before the race, their diet is changed to about 60 to 70 per cent carbohydrate. That increases the glycogen stores in their muscles and liver.

McGavock said runners will also consume sugar during the race through a drink or gel, more of a complex carbohydrate, to guard against bonking.

Coolsaet, who could be the man of the hour on Sunday, said he’ll be ready for anything.

“You can look at it, you can be fearful of it or you can just kind of see it as an adventure,” he said. “You’re going to really test yourself and it’s going to be interesting to see how you come out the other end of it. I don’t embrace it by any means. I don’t want to see it. But I’m ready for it. I’ll hit it head on.”

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